British Sign Language and Deaf Culture 2A (T5004)

15 credits, Level 4

Autumn teaching

This third-stage module of the 60-credit pathway in British Sign Language (BSL) and Deaf Culture will continue to develop your range and conversational technique in BSL in familiar and everyday contexts, and to broaden your knowledge and awareness of Deaf culture.

Additionally, the module offers you the opportunity to discuss in BSL a specific chosen topic of interest relating to BSL and/or Deaf culture.

The module aims to enable you to:

• start and hold a conversation
• demonstrate confident use of sign language grammar at a basic level and explore more complex structures
• develop study skills to observe, record and evaluate your own use/understanding of BSL, using video technology
• work in groups to explore new topics and develop conversations in discursive topics (e.g. types of education, examples of Deaf culture, media, where Deaf spaces form)
• develop an understanding of Deaf lives and how Deaf cultural identity is encouraged and discouraged across times and places.

Classes will consist of a variety of activities, including regular practice in pronunciation (production of signs) and listening (understanding signs), simulations, practical exercises and conversation etc., based around themes, grammatical structures and language skills.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 46 hours of contact time and about 104 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.